Transmigrating to the Ming Dynasty’s Imperial Examination

e will need a supervisory officer.
Whoever is good, write the verses down on paper and the bad will be discarded.
But, there is no need to provide your own paper, I will ask someone to bring you paper and a brush.
Go go, let me take you to the table.”

The banquet had been held in the Shen family’s garden and there were quite a few older, senior scholars attending the banquet.
A few tender and beautiful courtesans were just playing pipa in addition to a sizhu ensemble, accompanying the scholars for a chat.
Shen Zheng took Guo Yong and the others over, regardless of the shengyuan, the courtesans hurriedly rose from their seats to greet them, bashfully and tenderly looking at the group of young scholars.

Pipa: four stringed Chinese musical instrument belonging to the plucked category of instruments

Sizhu: style of traditional Chinese instrumental style and in this case a Chinese woodwind/stringed ensemble.
Literally made of silk (strings) and bamboo (winds).

The middle-aged scholar in the guest seat smiled and said, “Ai yah, as soon as youngsters arrive, no one wants us old men anymore.”

Shen Yu grinned, “Xu xiong do not get angry.
Ask Guo xiong to come over and sit here and the beauties will naturally follow.”

Xiong: elder brother (xiong is the same in shixiong, but this is more formal while shixiong is often used for peers in the same school, sect etc

He arranged the xiucai to be seated in the atrium, but the tongsheng could only sit on the side seats set under the veranda in the corridor, the two sides as rivers Jing and Wei separate clearly.
Yue Su’s own cousin did not even call Yue Su to the table either, but asked him to entertain the schoolmates he had brought with him.

 as rivers Jing and Wei separate clearly (idiom): to be entirely different

Atrium looks Something Like This 

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Shen Zheng pointed to a courtesan and ordered her to sit with the tongsheng and later on, she would need to sing their composed poems later.

Although the courtesan was a little reluctant to leave the group of xiucai, after sitting and looking at the group of shy and jerky teenagers, seeing Cui Xie’s appearance that warmed the heart and delighted the eye,  the dissatisfaction vanished like smoke in thin air.

warmed the heart and delighted the eye (idiom): pleasing, delightful

Vanish like smoke in thin air (idiom): disappear

She squeezed next to Cui Xie’s side and asked them with a smile, “How should I call you little young masters? Want to listen to this servant sing a few songs to accompany the wine-drinking?” She directed these words towards Cui Xie’s direction.

A few schoolmates, facing such a tender face, could not bear this and promptly righteously sacrificed their bodies to block Cui Xie, but this squeezed him off the seat.
Fortunately, the host Yue Su was qualified and pulled him from outside, so this way Cui Xie was not squeezed directly to the ground.

However, Cui Xie had not properly gotten up yet when behind him came a familiar-sounding, vaguely angry shout, “What are you all doing?!”

Yue Su’s face paled and he withdrew his hand sloppily.
Cui Xie almost fell to his knees, holding onto the corner of the table and supporting himself up, swaying and shaking a few times before standing firm.
Several of his schoolmates were desperately sitting upright, not daring to have any contact with that singing courtesan whatsoever.

Cui Xie looked back, and saw Teacher Lin’s halberd hair and beard, his face full of blatant anger looking towards Wang, Luo shixiong and the other senior brothers.
The host, Shen Zheng and a few of the older scholars went up to greet them.
On account of his friends’ faces, Teacher Lin spared them temporarily, but the few tongsheng bowered their heads, their faces flushed, not daring to make trouble anymore.

Frightened! Primary school students entered with their peers in a morally problematic place, and accidentally stumbled across the sight of their Teacher and the Host chatting and laughing with each other.
Was there anything more embarrassing than this?

Of course there was.

That is, Teacher Lin, under the numerous criticized students, individually singled him out as a model of moral character and pulled him out to praise him a few phrases.
And he personally said their names, “Yue Su, Cui Xie, you two are sensible, pull those bastards up for me!”

The tongsheng restrainedly and cautiously stood up, and Shen Zheng, as the host, hurriedly helped to smooth things over, smiling, “This is all my fault, asking an incompatible young lady to serve them.
These little friends please sit, you will have to write poems later, don’t let fright spoil the poetic mood.”

Teacher Lin snorted coldly, “What poems would they write, it will be merely nonsense!”

Guo Yong said a few nice words for them: “Why not? When we were in the outer courtyard, we heard a few of the little friends composing poems, there are still some redeeming qualities.
Although Young Master Cui does not know how to, he said he was willing to be a supervisory officer for us and help us transcribe down good poems.
Shi shixiong, just forgive them this time.”

Teacher Lin could not contradict his friend’s words and have them lose face, so he just snorted twice, ignoring his students for the time being, telling them to go back and copy the《Great Learning》ten times each—Cui Xue and Yue Su who hadn’t made trouble did not need to copy.

Envious and secretly bitter gazes immediately fell upon the two who did not get punishment, staring at them so hard until their robes were going to fall off.

Shen Zheng grinned, “Since everyone is here, let us start writing poems and then choose a Chief Poet to start up the banquet’s festivities.
Su–di will take care of you little friends on my behalf and since this Young Master Cui is to be the supervisory officer, he should come to the table in front to prepare to transcribe the poems.”

-Di: younger brother

Teacher Lin said, “I am old, I do not want to fight with you talented youngsters, so today, I will precede over the event as a judge.”

Everyone had come to compose poems and no one argued with him on the matter.
He got up and said to the xiucai: “Since it is the Chongyang Festival, you should compose poems on the Chongyang Festival, referring to chrysanthemums as the subject.
Each person should compose one, use new ones and don’t half-heartedly just take out old ones.”

Chongyang Festival: Double Ninth Festival or Double Yang Festival occurs on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month which is said to have a lot of yang (sun/warm) energy and is a very auspicious date.
It is customary to climb a high mountain, drink chrysanthemum liquor and wear the zhuyu (japanese cornel dogwood) plant (considered to have cleansing qualities).
Chongyang cake is popular and incense sticks are burned.
Some Chinese will visit the graves of their ancestors to pay respects on this day as well.

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The courtesans laughed and begged these talents to compose good poems for them to sing.
No matter how talented the xiucai and tongsheng were, under the attention of beauties, they were full of energy, spreading open the paper and brushes with confidence.

The maid of the Shen family lit incense to measure the time and then gave Cui Xie brush, ink and exquisitely colored paper for him to copy any masterpieces.
Cui Xie refused and instead pointed to his paper box and said, “I have my own paper, but thank you for your trouble jiejie.”

Jiejie: older sister

Teacher Lin was sitting at the main table, not far from Cui Xie.
He glanced and saw the paper box on his table and asked, “What book did you bring? Could it be the homework that still hasn’t been finished yet?”

No, I brought this big box to act like a pretentious prick, just waiting for someone like you to ask about it.

Cui Xie looked down and smiled, “Responding to Teacher, this is the newly made chrysanthemum paper from my bookstore.
This disciple felt it was more suitable to copy Chongyang poems using chrysanthemum paper and specially brought it with me for today.” 

“Chrysanthemum paper?” The people at the guest tables were not in a hurry to write poems and looked at the box with interest.
“Could it be that it is paper with chrysanthemums printed on it? It is a graceful and elegant artifact, take it out for us to see what the chrysanthemum looks like, seeing if it is worthy of the chrysanthemum poem written by these talented Qian’an youth.”

Cui Xie responded swiftly and flipped open the box, revealing flowered paper rolled into a cylindrical shape.
Using the end of both hands, he spread it out from right to left very slowly.

At first, what was exposed was only the empty yellow-dyed paper, with a slanted watermark in the empty corner of the paper.
Shen Zheng joked, “If it is just dyed with a yellow color, it cannot be considered as flower paper.
This kind of paper cannot match up to the words of our county’s number one talent.”

Everyone looked at Guo Yong and laughed.
He seemed a bit bashful and replied, “I think this flower paper is too big and the chrysanthemum printed in the corner hasn’t been revealed yet.”

The flowered paper continued to unfold, revealing a little light-green skirt and an autumnal cloth.
The smile on Teacher Lin’s face was restrained and he revealed a trace of surprise, doubting, “You hired someone to paint this for your shop? Actually painting on paper, it takes a lot of work, but it is quite extravagant.”

Cui Xie’s fingers made a mistake, and the entire drawing unfolded, revealing a sweet, fair and graceful woman holding a white chrysanthemum.
Now, it was not just Teacher Lin, but the host Shen Zheng and the guest of honor, Guo Yong, who were known for their talents and had seen their fair share of calligraphy and paintings, could not help but stand up, asking in amazement, “Whose painting is this? How can such a painting be used as paper?”

Cui Xie raised his head, smiling slightly to everyone and explained unhurriedly, “Wansheng’s father is a poor, but upright official, how could he be so extravagant to ask someone to paint this as paper? A few days ago, Teacher Lin bestowed upon wansheng a roll of good works obtained from the capital and among the works, this chrysanthemum painting was specially painted to match with it.
One thought the painting was appropriate for the Chongyang festival, so I asked the artisans in the study to print it out for amusement, and it did not cost much material or effort.”

He opened the roll of prints, giving one to each guest, pointing to the little poem next to the beauty and said, “It is precisely this poem, that wansheng truly adores and merely reciting it was inadequate, so I manufactured it into a print.”

No one even cared about reading the poem, just staring at the beauty next to it, their eyes unable to move away.
After a while, someone sighed, “How is this chrysanthemum paper, this is clearly a beauty paper?”

Teacher Lin nearly crumpled the paper, but managed to control his strength, coughing lightly to ask, “Who did you learn to paint from? Where did you learn to make such paper, how can you print such gorgeously colored paintings? Is it a method from the capital?”

This was not quite right.
Although Qian’an was located in a remote geographical location, close to the mountain and coastal guards, it was still in North Zhili and it was not difficult to transport goods from Beijing.
But the paintings he had bought in Nanjing and Beijing, had never been so exquisite and beautiful, the painting unlike a mortal object.

Cui Xie simply said, ‘This disciple learned painting from Lu juren in Jiangxi, but does not know how to make paper.
It is just that I temporarily wanted to make colored paper and asked those artisans to try it out, and they printed it like this.”

Juren (舉人, lit.
“recommended man”), a qualified graduate who passed the triennial provincial exam

….What kind of master artisan were they ah! Teacher Lin’s heart trembled slightly and he could only sigh, “As expected of artisans from an official’s house and then asked Cui Xie, “Does this paper have a name?”

Cui Xie shook his head, “It is just chrysanthemum paper, Chongyang paper, etc, just call it like that.
But the person in this portrait is the fox demon encountered by Jingyang‘s top scholar Fang Ning, Wan Ning.
Should the paper be called ‘Wan Ning paper’ then?”

Jingyang: famous metropolis in ancient China

Guo Yong suddenly opened his mouth and said with a sense of lamentation, “If you can print such a colored paper drawn in fine brushwork, why bother about what picture is drawn on the paper, or what holiday it is? I think your shop’s paper will be most suitable named ‘Cui paper’.
After today, I am afraid the two capitals and 13 provinces will all compete to buy this Cui paper!”